WORD OF MOUTH

Dismal fate may await 'State of Play'

A low turnout for the Russell Crowe vehicle could have wider repercussions: sending the smart adult drama to the sidelines.

He makes $20 million a movie, won the best actor Oscar for "Gladiator" and enjoys his pick of Hollywood's choicest roles. But there's one thing that Russell Crowe can't do right now: sell movie tickets.

The actor's conspiracy thriller "State of Play" lands in theaters Friday and all indications suggest it will perform as poorly as (and possibly worse than) Crowe's previous film: last October's box-office bust "Body of Lies," which opened to $12.9 million and topped out at $39.4 million. Audience-tracking surveys show that "State of Play," which costars Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, will be trounced this weekend by Zac Efron's "17 Again" and may even finish behind the low-budget action film "Crank: High Voltage."

Universal Pictures, the film's producer and distributor, is hopeful "State of Play," adapted from an acclaimed 2003 British miniseries of the same name, could generate opening weekend ticket sales in excess of $10 million, with a potentially higher gross if the film's reviews, so far mostly positive, continue to run favorably. But $10-million openings are not why studios pay actors $20-million salaries, which is what Crowe received for "State of Play."

What's more, given the film's more than $60-million budget, "State of Play" will struggle to turn a profit -- its audience-tracking surveys place the film on the same box-office track as such recent duds as "The International," "The Pink Panther 2" and "Defiance."

While some of "State of Play's" likely lackluster performance will be blamed on Crowe, the 45-year-old Australian -- who is overweight and disheveled in the film's lead role as an investigative newspaper reporter -- is hardly the sole issue. Equally problematic is "State of Play's" genre: the highbrow adult drama, which is quickly becoming a big-studio relic.

Universal knows this all too well. Despite positive notices and Julia Roberts in a lead role, the studio's "Duplicity" has grossed only $37.3 million in the United States after opening March 20, and Universal's "Frost/Nixon" -- despite five Academy Award nominations, including best picture -- didn't even get to $19 million in domestic theaters.

Universal, like its peer studios, can hardly be blamed, then, for scrapping many of its planned dramas in favor of easier-to-market video game adaptations ("Bioshock"), toy titles ("Stretch Armstrong") and sequels ("Little Fockers," a fourth "Bourne" movie).

"You are going to find every studio saying, 'I can't do it, I can't do it,' " Donna Langley, Universal's production chief, says of the near-term prospects for dramas. "It will be awhile until there are a lot of really smart dramas."

In the last few months, the General Electric-owned studio has put the brakes on some of its most acclaimed dramatic projects, including writer-director Gary Ross' "The Free State of Jones," Spike Lee's "L.A. Riots," an adaptation of the Claire Messud novel "The Emperor's Children" and the AIDS drama "The Dallas Buyer's Club."

For years, Universal has been a reliable maker of smart, adult-oriented movies, and "State of Play" was a natural fit for the studio's programming philosophy.

"I was really attracted to the backdrop, the world, the environment," Langley says. "I love the collision of journalism, politics and big business."

The hope was a modern-day "Absence of Malice" crossed with "All the President's Men" and "Three Days of the Condor." "It's the kind of movie," Langley says almost wistfully, "that 10 years ago every studio was looking for."

Director Kevin Macdonald's ("The Last King of Scotland") adaptation of the British production maintains the miniseries' core conspiracy ideas, with several new (and American) twists.

Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, a journalist at a Washington, D.C., newspaper. McAdams costars as one of the paper's political bloggers, and the two reporters unearth a complicated plot that involves murder, extramarital affairs, rising-star congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck) and a nefarious military contractor.

It wasn't a particularly easy movie to produce. The screenplay went through numerous revisions by four screenwriters, including some uncredited rewrites by "Minority Report's" Scott Frank, who crafted a reshoot aimed at clarifying McAffrey's relationship with Collins' wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn).

Most important, "State of Play" wasn't always going to star Crowe. Brad Pitt was originally cast in the lead role, but the actor told Universal he wasn't happy with the script.